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Max Jacobson

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Who would have imagined the Gold Coast casino would be a hotbed for authentic Chinese cooking? Now the recent opening of Noodle Exchange has thrust it into the forefront of Chinese dining in Vegas, and customers are slowly getting the message.

You mightn’t know it to look at me, but I occasionally work out at Las Vegas Athletic Club on South Eastern Avenue, and a mere stone’s throw away is one of Vegas’ truly great Italian restaurants, the unassuming La Focaccia.

The network of overhead pipes above you carries the world’s largest selection of draft beers, up to 250 delicious brews. And the menu seems almost as encyclopedic, as if the world’s largest selection of dishes were on hand to accompany them.

You don’t come to Kan’s Kitchen for a romantic date. This is one of those “turn up the lights and eat” establishments where Cantonese can be heard across the room, but almost every single dish I tried here was delicious.

The free-standing structure that houses Caminos de Morelia, one of our newer Mexican restaurants, is simmering with history. For years, it belonged to Lou and Angie Ruvo, a couple who operated a seminal Vegas Italian restaurant called The Venetian, the only place in town I knew of to eat pork neck, a dish I sorely miss.

Most of us in my field like to think of ourselves as knowledgeable in terms of predicting trends, as well as the potential success or failure of a concept when we are faced with it. But nothing can explain the frenzied response that has characterized Blue Martini, a new restaurant and lounge at the Town Square mall.

Two restaurants using the buzzword “Mediterranean” to describe their respective cuisines sit in a modest upper Charleston Boulevard mall. Both of them serve food that is more Middle Eastern than anything else, but that label still carries a stigma as far as owners are concerned—or so it would seem.

Opening a restaurant is a lifelong dream for many new Americans; usually places that represent the cooking of their native lands. Gina Linzi, who came here eight years ago to work as a bus girl at New York-New York’s Il Fornaio, has realized that dream. After a climb to that restaurant’s position of general manager, she struck out on her own to open a comely Italian bistro on the city’s west side. And it’s a real charmer, like Gina herself.

Down-home cooking has never had it better in Sin City, with the advent of two places tinged by the Crescent City, New Orleans. One is an authentic N’awlins-style café, where po’ boys and file gumbo rule. The other is a barbecue shack serving some of the best ’cue in town, as well as side dishes that would make a Cajun grandmother weep with joy.

Jin Myung is hoping three will be the charm for her difficult and expensively constructed location, now home to Sea Stone, an Asian fusion and sushi restaurant. The space started life as Tre, run by the Maccioni family of Le Cirque fame, and later morphed into Hannah’s, Vietnamese/Asian fusion from Hannan An of Crustacean, before surfacing in its current incarnation.